


Barefeet in the Forest.

by glitter and gold (doubleinfinity)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Rumbelle - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-15
Updated: 2013-02-15
Packaged: 2017-11-29 10:24:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/685876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doubleinfinity/pseuds/glitter%20and%20gold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Belle comes home with a full memory; Rumpel greets her with a filled bathtub.<br/>(Disclaimer; slightly mature content.<br/>Language is free-verse esque.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Barefeet in the Forest.

**Author's Note:**

> I/I. Incongruent To Our Shadows.

She spent a lot of time racing through the forest. Her feet were quick, especially in the moment that it finally kicked in she was free. She wasn't locked away anymore; neither in a hospital basement or a tower of dragons. Rumpel watched her. He played a slight smile as she danced on her heavy body, weaving in between trees and curling besides vines. She had to make use of her new flesh. Gravity could impale the soul, and her insouciance was limited. But Rumpel could have stared at her ritualistic disarray until the Earth flipped on its axis.

It was later on that he found the meaning of "Forever."

It took forever to clean the dirt from the creases of her feet. There were pieces of dried leaves and crumbling specs of soil hidden between her toes. Somehow, even her face was streaked with mud. "Come, dear," he coaxed to her, lifting and limping, bringing her to the ceramic frame that bordered the bathtub. "Let's run some bath water and get you cleaned and warm."

It would take forever for him to memorize the curvature of her skin, the fragrance of her body. But as he glided warm, soapy water along her leg, he believed in the gentleness of her body, and therefore understood her nature.

"What's that?" Belle smiled bashfully, extending her arm down to dance across his fingertips with her own. (Slender, witted.) Rumpel caught her fingers as they glided and rubbed the foamy liquid against her palm.

He lifted himself from the floor and settled beside her on the rim of the tub. "Lavender," he divulged quietly. "A very healing sort of the scent. It seeps beneath your skin and makes you sleepy." He crafted a kiss on her hand and brought her palm up by her nose. "Might even work faster if you absorb it with all your senses," he whispered, trading her hand for an arm around her waist.

Belle laughed faintly, her giggle muffled by his clothing. "But I don't want to be tired," she charmed, leaning back to contact his eyes. They were wide and polished, where the rest of him prickled and tickled, like the grass that was still below her soles. Rumpel lifted a tentative hand and brought the wash cloth back under her feet, swiping the remnants of Earth onto the bathroom floor.

Holding onto him so she wouldn't fall into the filling tub, Belle glanced around at the inside of his bathing chamber. The walls were cast with iron trays that held plastic and glass bottles, some that sparkled and others that looked like poison in the form of shampoo. She surmised they all smelled uniquely; and indeed, coagulated in the air though concealed. The warm water that flowed from the tap moistened and brought to life the smells of globs/stains/splatters hidden in the tub, and the entire room began to swirl in the faint odor of cinnamon and herbs, spices, lemon, garlic, pastry...

"Darling?" Rumpel hushed, nestling his face close to hers and pecking a kiss against her lips. "Shall I let you bathe?"

Belle trailed her fingers up Rumpel's nape, tangling the hair that he'd let grow long. Her lips static, she mused, "I love that you haven't cut your hair, Rumpel." Whether or not it was due to one of his purple-tinted elixirs, or just by the will of nature, his hair reflected each photon of light in the room and shimmered it back by in every blade of hair. She dug her hands deep into his scalp.

"Et toi, Ma Belle," Rumpel breathed, pulling out the brass hair clip that was pinning back her brown locks, and let them spill down her back, right into his receptive hands. "Clearly," he toyed, "being an unattractive pair is not a concern to be had."

The water was milky and steamed harmlessly. Belle tip-toed her fingers down Rumpel's back, grinning. "You know," she tempted, "you don't have to leave when I... take my bath." She watched and timed his face, which moved from prompt surprise to an amused smile. He held her firmly by the hips, sliding her close enough to brush their knees side by side.

"And yet..." he spoke, "I seem to have reached an impasse. We both are fully clothed."

Belle opened her clouded eyes to meet his, and instead of matching his insinuative expression, she grabbed him by the arms and pulled both of them down into the water.

It was as warm as predicted, and splashed both of them with lapping waves and murky bubbles. Foam greeted the surface and met with the outer edges of their skin, seeping through the fabric of their clothing and drenching them both in incandescent liquid. If the sleeping herbs had intended to work immediately, they clearly were defective, for with the entirety of her vigor and whimsicality, Belle brought a deep kiss beneath Rumpel's lips.

He seemed to forget that they were compromised by the heaviness of clothes and the weight of water. Not even the daze of the fall or the sudden impact of water were apparent in his eyes. They were closed; he was now grabbing onto the sleeves of Belle's dress, pulling himself to his knees so he could wrap his arms around her back. His expressions showed desperation and affection, and he brought Belle's body against his while arduously capsizing them into the bath.

Rumpel's impulse shook him, and he quickly gathered himself together.

Rising to the surface, Rumpel broke from Belle's lips and brought them to her neck, laying careful kisses atop her skin. Chiding himself, he murmured, "This is no way to treat a princess. Do you not want... thrones?" He smiled as she laughed and threw her head from side to side. "Chocolates...? Flowers? Servants?" She continued to giggle and shake her head, leading him to grab at her even more.

Rumpel opened his eyes and saw his girl, damp, half-sunken, her golden dress in shambling layers that the water separated. "Oh my dear," he acknowledged, cautiously lifting one foot after another to exit the bath. "Come, let me get you out of those wet clothes." He extended his hand, which she hastily grabbed, coming to her feet in an off-balance compromise.

"This way!" he teased, letting her go and tip-toeing across the bathroom floor on arched feet, mimicking the way Belle danced through the woods. His clothes were heavy and sopping, and Belle called after him, following his wet footprints into the hallway of his very large home.

"But," she yelled after him, "Your floors! They're going to get wet!"

Rumpel smiled from his place ahead and smiled. "Yes, and there are spells for that... or rather... mops."

Unable to navigate and still run fast enough, Belle unzipped her dress from the back and let it spill around her feet, leaving her naked but warm, and much more agile. It wasn't hard to find him. He was poised by his bedroom, shivering cold in his heavy clothing. When he saw her, his eyes light up with bemusement, and then sunk into a deep sense of recognition that prompted him to come forward and hold her.

"Oh Belle," he murmured, stepping back but still holding onto her. "Come here, love, follow me."

He motioned her towards his bed, which was bathed spaciously in silk. As she slid beneath the red-satin colors, she felt an immediate harmony between her wet body and the sheets. They received her; made her warm. Rumpel demurely removed his clothing beside the bed and likewise pressed himself beneath the covers, touching her with a comfort dressed in primal desire.

It was easy to differentiate between his caress and the sheets'. The red silk wrapped her body into a safe cocoon; meanwhile, his hands roamed broadly, clearly savoring each inch they met with. He swept past her thighs and waist, thumb stroking any indented bone or out-of-place roughness that it discovered. Her skin, her pores, were gentle and relaxed. Lilac carapace, remnants of her run outdoors. Memories clung to her, though he'd never touched her skin this way.

Likewise, she'd hardly intoxicated herself with something so saccharine and profound. He was spiced and chalky. He tasted like the pages of an old book: decomposing to vanilla, but agelessly preserved with paprika and pepper. She reached around to his butt and pulled him closer, his tongue rolling through her mouth and pressing between their lips. The utterance was a moan, she sipped on it, and he returned the sound by grasping her tongue gently with his teeth and suckling against her taste buds.

"Rumpel," Belle undertoned, reaching to grasp his forearms as they lingered on her waist. 

Her hair was damp; the curls unraveled against the pillow. With his left hand, he clutched the ends of each lock, spinning the cherry-brown streaks like the tassels of yarn on his wheel. "Yes," he inclined, his knuckles dropping to rest on the side of her cheek. "Yes, Belle. That's who I am."

But he himself did not know her. He remembered her, but did not grant the assumption that she was that same being. This Belle had been twisted by bars. She'd been grasped and torn, sedated and struck. Powder from the tranquilizers lined her stomach like thin chalk drawings shaped like Orexin and Melatonin; her last dose still hid between the molecules of water and blood in her body. And still she danced, thicker than dream water and deeper than its effects.

He would shield her, so long as she was his Belle: all variance in the tintinnabulation sufficed.

He hinged his arms to cradle her body, then shifted himself above her. One hand still held her cheek while the other fell to her thigh, and he pressed his open mouth between her collarbones, to which his body had fallen.

Protection was one of the rare things that he could not visually understand. Rumpel was whole; her bars had been wide. There was space between the prison walls, but freedom was forbidden. He had no spaces, no loose fabric, and yet he offered her a world. He didn't need to symbolically elaborate the difference; she cupped him with subservient hands.

She didn't taste like lilac. She was all peach as he trailed his lip towards her eyes, land-marking her neck with kisses that exposed the very tip of his tongue, just barely grazing at her skin.

Belle used both hands to coddle him, pull him down, and Rumpel's body quaked onto hers, bringing with it the dampness that remained from the bathwater, chemically bonded to sweat of his own. Her body was easy to glide over like this. They didn't cling together, but every elaborate movement allowed one to roll over the other. Rub against each other. Beads of cold sweat rolling from his hair and onto her warm skin.

Holding her lips with his, Rumpel grasped both of her breasts, arching his body upwards to wrap her legs between his own. The tips of their tongues brushed until Belle parted to let his in, speaking circles to his thumbs, clockwise in their swirl that lighted her nerves but did not clasp with claws too sharp, nor with intentions too rough.

He listened to the ticks and responses of her body, eager when it rose - patient when it retracted. She moaned when he kissed her nipple with the edges of his tongue, and she moved when he laid his head down between her neck and clavicle, snaking an arm around her back, and slipping a hand between her legs.

Rumpel breathed from his nose, his throat exhaling a quiet rumble of pleasure. His body settled into its new state: heart shifting to a pathway of blood, lower half doing the same, rib cage quieting its flutter, hands strengthening their frenzy. Belle's body was as receptive on the outside as it was inside, where he was able to navigate her state of mind by sliding along red silk, no longer with a wetness attributed to a bath tub. The entirety of her altered his physical being very much.

Then her voice blinked through the peach-colored fort.

"Wait, Rumpel," she spoke, catching his face between his two hands. His free arm reached towards her wrist, holding it endearingly; affectionately. Her eyes were glazed, coming up for air. The fort and their sheets hung very close to their necks, and from there, they'd filled in the rest with details.

It was only a second. He asked, "Yeah?" exposing eyes that were accommodating and expressive, though his heart thudded dangerously close to his spirit. A choke on words could indicate anything- she could have forgotten who she was all over again, or remembered the monster he really was, or recognized her mistake in coming back, thinking this was what she wanted. Any frantically composed possibility was plausible when his terror-accustomed cortex only had one second to fill with options.

But instead she asked, "Are you using magic?"

He thought it to be a quip. But confined to the semantic evidence of her expression, she was serious. Even so, he couldn't suppress a sparse smile, even if it were only a response to his physiological error.

"Belle..." he crooned, resting his closed eyes on the bridge of her nose and circling them in delicate patterns around her face. "No... not magic. Magic is not to be used with you." He opened to meet her questioning gaze, already aware that she needed clarification before she willed herself to trust anyone's word. 

"You lift the affects of magic, Belle," he explained. "You expunge curses, you trade fantasy for gesture. You are the opposite of magic. You are nature." His toes twinged against the soles of her feet. "I will not be unnatural for you."

Belle's eyes were the color of Earth (and olive martinis, and leaves of mint, for that matter); her head was in the shape of reality. Rumpel was watching the irises, deepened with marshy tree roots and apothecary swirls pulsing from the undergrowth, and yet she was seeing... dragons. Bursts of blues, fast as sleep spindles, and incantations hovering on her lover's lips.

"But..." she protested, that single word spreading over his forehead in either awe or shock or excitement. "But you have good magic. You can create things. You help people."

Rumpel held her, wondering over what she'd said. He'd tried to use magic to help people. And he became 15-letter long demon that could be killed by a single dagger, yet hardly even touched by a kiss. He touched her with a kiss and spread his fingers out to massage her labia.

"It takes a long time to figure out how magic works, Belle." He kissed her craning neck, unsure if his words were lost in the careful breaths rising from her throat. "Magic should not be sought when you are desperate. You must be self-actualized, and act like nature. Then you will create magic. In this world, we have no alchemic ingredients. No enchanted objects. We create magic simply by moving on from our neutral selves."

As if in response, Belle's hands released him, falling gracefully down to her side and brushing mutely against his hips.

"You are falling asleep, my love," he whispered, pressing his lips against her cheek. Now she tasted like lilac.

Behind her eyes, pumpkins and sea-dragons pranced beside each other. Houses swallowed one another and produced castles. Girls in flowing dresses, with flowing hair, rolled their skirts down balconies and took swords with them into the woods. Crowns were placed, gingerbread was eaten. Her memories of the old world balanced in disequilibrium with the fable-versions found in the story books of this world; but ever since she'd kissed his darker form, she'd been blind to enchantment. Now the archaic, ancient world of magic pressed itself into her mind, planting itself: "Rumpelstiltskin, Rumpelstiltskin, Rumpelstiltskin," against her lips.

Sleep deepened into its duskier stage, and Rumpel gazed after her, wondering to where she was descending. His body shook, damp, still holding tight to her warm figure. The purple scent of his sleeping herbs made his eyes swim too, though not quickly enough for him ever to hope to catch up to her. The pills from the cell still swayed in her blood, and her day had been coupled with tearful confusion; then with the return of her independence, euphoric dancing.

Rumpel rolled off of her, wrapping her body in whatever sheets he could gather from around her. Beneath them, he rounded both his arms and braced her in them, feeling fleshy exposure rise and fall against his forearms.

His erection sank against the sheets of the bed, and he desperately wished he could still make love to her now, with her fingertips dancing across his nape and lips searching him for hidden tricks. But he would. Here, in this bed, he would.

Rumpel had a feeling that Belle would create magic faster, and stronger, than he ever did.


End file.
